Climate controlled environments are created in a number and variety of settings and locations. Typical climate controlled environments may include, but are not limited to, data center environments, health care environments, manufacturing and production environments, retail environments, food service environments, and food retail and warehousing environments, such as supermarkets and convenience stores. Various environments may have sub-environments, which each may have individual climate control requirements. For example, in supermarkets and convenience stores, refrigerated display cases, coolers, and freezers can each be a sub-environment having environmental condition requirements. A datacenter may have a plurality of sub-environments, with each sub-environment housing one or more racks or other computing equipment. The temperature and humidity of each sub-environment in a datacenter typically controlled in an effort to maintain proper operating conditions for the computer hardware. The conditions of climate controlled environments are typically monitored through the use of various types of wired or wireless sensors that are deployed within the environment. The amount of data collected from an environment is often limited by the number of sensors, type of sensors, location of the sensors, and whether the sensors are operational. In the example context of a refrigerated case at a retail location, a single temperature sensor is typically placed in the air discharge area to monitor and/or control the temperature for the entire case. A single temperature point cannot typically reflect true temperature dynamics across the case, nor does a single sensor (or small sensor set) enable for service technicians to easily identify root causes of problems for diagnostic purposes.
While increasing the number of sensors deployed into an environment can increase the accuracy and functionality of an environmental monitoring system, adding sensors into an environment poses numerous operational challenges. For example, for existing structures, installing additional “after-market” wired sensors presents installation issues, as control wiring must typically be routed from the sensor in the sub-environment to a centralized control system. For structures under construction, wiring runs must still be installed to connect each sensor to a centralized control system. In both instances, running such control wiring can be complex, labor intensive, and costly. Using wireless sensors does not necessarily mitigate the issues. Wireless sensors are typically battery operated or utilize energy harvesting techniques, such as solar power. In both cases, the wireless sensors are typically placed inside the climate controlled environment. For battery-based sensors, due to the operating conditions of the sensors (e.g., low temperatures, humidity, condensation, etc.), the battery life can be reduced, thereby undesirably requiring frequent replacement, or otherwise resulting in non-operation sensors. For sensors that are equipped with energy harvesting techniques, the placement of the sensor may not expose the sensor to the necessary amount of ambient lighting necessary to sufficiently power the sensor.
Thus, it would be advantageous to provide for environmental condition surveillance systems and methods that address one or more of these issues. Indeed, it would be advantageous to provide for a system facilitating deployment of numerous sensors within an environment while reducing the challenges typically faced during sensor installation and operation.